In some big box stores in the US like Costco and Walmart, they have a person stationed at the exit who checks your receipt and quickly looks over what’s in your cart to try and prevent merchandise absenteeism.
I don’t think it even works. It’s probably only done for the sake of having a really shit job that management can punish people with.
I appreciate all the links. In some ways, I am more confused then ever! It could be that this guy has a hair-trigger around officers BECAUSE he’s been abused by them before, or he’s just an asshole.
Most Costco receipt checkers actually take time to give a decent look, I’ve noticed. But Costco requires a membership, so all of this is laid out pretty clearly in their “membership rules/expectations”. The same doesn’t apply to stores like Target or Wal Mart. And, I don’t imagine Costco would do something like this unless it actually was a benefit. They like to keep things pretty stream-lined. That said, most people don’t mind waiting a bit at Costco. People are more relaxed there. Probably because they pay for a membership and it feels more “special”, IDK.
Costco probably pays most attention to big-ticket items, however, especially during busier times, and they make use with different colored stickers and high lighters.
It’s a cop story on boingboing, but the cops not being a dick…
Just look at it?
I’m way out of my depth here…
It may not be unconstitutional, but targeted suspicionless searches are flat out obscene.
There’s really no polite response to obsenity, certainly none that don’t feel like obstruction to a cop.
To mine, he sounded new york… But from the tumblr, if those pics are of him, he looks African American to me.
“Honor your oath, scumbag”
“receipt checker” is my term for that public (as opposed to membership) retail employee who instigates my immediate need to return my recent purchase for a full refund. They say “I need to see your receipt” and I say “yes, you will need my receipt to process a return of every item in this cart” and I keep on rolling.
The cop is being a dick. The difference between him or not-a-cop asking the question is what happens to the person giving particular answers because, say, they’re intimidated, scared, flustered, not thinking clearly, etc.
The cop was looking for trouble, and deserved every"Pour yourself a big heapin’ bowl full of ‘Fuck you!’, melon-head!" he got.
“I got a couple of balls in my bag, sir.” (grabs crotch.)
Right. It’s all about power. I’ve seen a lot of comments on this post saying that the guy behind the camera is being unreasonable and harshly responding to a simple question. All of those comments are misguided. This is not an interaction between equals. One is in a position of power and is abusing that power. Let’s reframe the scenario. Imagine a man on the street asking a woman walking by, “Hi, would you like to go on a date with me?”. Simple question. No harm, right? In the workplace, if the man asking the question is the woman’s supervisor, that’s called sexual harassment because of the power differential. It puts the woman in an uncomfortable position because declining may be risking her job. It’s inappropriate, and potentially illegal. She’s well within her rights to say “piss off, and I’m reporting you to HR”. I suspect no one here would fault her for doing that. On the street, when a police officer asks “what’s in the bag?”, it’s the moral equivalent of sexual harassment. The officer is in a position of power, and the citizen is now faced with a dilemma: submit to an unreasonable question for fear of arrest.
It’s quite possible to be an asshole and still be in the right. For a change, the cop did nothing illegal or unconstitutional. The man (Thomas apparently), goes around recording cops to see if they’ll arrest him. What Thomas is doing is entirely lawful and his right under the law. Being a dick isn’t and shouldn’t be against the law. But yeah, the guy is still being a…New Yorker. Everyone needs a hobby I suppose.
Somebody has to watch the watchers.
I completely agree. Although I believe the rift between police and citizens in the United States is systemic (militarization, mass criminalization/incarceration, poverty and classism, and so forth…), shedding daylight on the day-to-day injustices are what can motivate society to find solutions (however imperfect) to those problems, if anything can.
The day you see videos of cops asking random civilluans they encounter: “how are you doing, has your day been going well? Do you have problems at home? It’s okay, this is in confidence and I have legal authority to help you out if your significant other is abusing you or your children” will indeed be a good day.
Hell, I’d be happy if they asked (in a public but private setting eg a street corner with anyone else out of mic range, but still visible) “is there something you’d like to report? Anonymously, of course”
ETA:
Asking “what’s in your bag” is the same as asking “are you a criminal?” and to most cops saying “none of your business” or not answering or saying anything is suspicious enough for them to arrest you and lock your ass up without charges for the maximum duration of “legal holding” (essentially kidnapping). And they’re never punished (as far as I can tell) for throwing someone who is vocal in the drunk tank for 8-12 hours for not being polite.
This is an untenable situation. Cops need to be held accountable for their actions, but that never or rarely seems to happen. And when they are “held accountable” for wronful arrest (eg without probable cause) according to the PD, at worst they miss out on a few days pay, and most often are given vacation time with full pay because of their indiscretions, which just encourages the cops to not worry or care about the legality or public perception of their unconstitutional misconduct.
Police unions should be made illegal. And I say this as a bleeding heart liberal.
It’s better if we said: “screw collective bargaining for the police (who have more power to enact viloence than civillians) the general public should be the ones who decide the vaue of rule enforcers and those rule enforcers have to report to us”
Which I guess makes me some weird combination of liberal and libertarian.
When citizens have had enough of the cops’ bad behaviour they swear at them. When the cops have had enough, they shoot you in the back, break your spine, kill your kids, shoot your dog and then if you’re still alive, arrest you for destruction of police property when you bled on their shoes as they stomped you.
And that somebody needs to be rude when doing it otherwise where’s the incentive!
Basically I’ll toast the day cops are citizens with special authority to protect and serve other citizens rather than a martial police force used to perpetuate the status quo. Basically I’d like cops to relate more like firefighters to the public. But for that to happen, a few intersecting things have to change. The prison-industrial complex’s congressional lobby needs to be put under real scrutiny from the public (not the legislators from whom they curry favor). Police culture needs to embrace their communities be part of them so that protecting corrupt cops becomes hurting their own communities and families. Above all, we as a nation need to make it clear to the ruling class and the cops that we won’t stand idly by while police behave with impunity like violent thugs. These changes won’t happen overnight, but without the disinfectant of daylight, they’ll never happen at all.
So yeah, Thomas is a jerk, a jerk doing a public service. I won’t lionize him. He’s just doing what needs doing. I will say that if people don’t like how he goes about it, then they should do it themselves their way. The more of us walking around with lanterns, the sooner we’ll fine an honest cop.
ETA:
It’s not often appreciated that libertarian philosophy has given birth to several left-leaning schools of thought including one that’s straight-up called libertarian socialism. Libertarianism isn’t limited to the anarcho-capitalism or Ron Paul. (Though I don’t consider myself a libertarian, neither do I confine my politics to a particular tent, camp, party or group ideology.)
Absolutely.
With any luck we can get Joe average citizen to point a camera out his window onto the sidewalk and record police-civillian interactions and publish them to the shame and embarrassment of the local PD so that the public backlash can end up condemning bad cops and their complacent traitor partners so we can have a rough approximation of justice at the very least.
“serve and protect” is a fucking joke when the cops are given free reign to “use whatever tools are at their disposal” in order to “kill badguys”.
I don’t consider myself a libertarian either. I think primarily, people should do whatever makes themselves happy, as long as it doesn’t harm others.
So we need socialized healthcare. And we should have no philosphical or religious exemptions to vaccinations unless such stupid people are willing to live in BF nowhere and agree not to come into contact with the rest of civilization (although I do think the government should still have a right to remove children from antivaxxer parents, since not vaccinating your children is essentially child neglegt and abuse if they come down with measles or pertussis or somesuch under the parents’ care)
ETA:
In other words, I don’t think children are property of the parents. I believe that parents are stuards of their children untill the children can make decisions on their own. And I think that if parents make decisions that run counter to their children’s best interest, they should lose custody. Even if the parents’ sincerely held beliefs run counter to our modern understanding of medicine.
Sentient, sapient agents aren’t property, even of their parents and have a right to modern medicine’s best care, regardless of how fearful, uneducated and ignorant their parents are.
